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Monday, December 17, 2012

Cajun Corn Chowder

If you are a novice in the kitchen, making soup is an excellent place to start. Soups are super easy, super flavorful, and very comforting. This recipe requires very little actual "skills" in the kitchen, yet tastes like you spent hours making it. The soup is wonderfully textured, sweet from the corn, smoky from the spiced ham and warms you up from the inside.

I grew up with my Mom making a lovely corn soup, usually from a left-over ham. It's so perfect on a cold and rainy evening. Even now when I'm leaving work and it's dark and rainy, my mind drifts to some type of soup. It also freezes wonderfully.

for small, thin skinned "new" potatoes, you can just wash them and leave the skins on.

3 cups chicken broth/stock

1/2 cup tomato sauce

1 tsp kosher salt

1 rounded tsp sugar

1/4 tsp black pepper

Optional -

heavy cream (for finishing. NOT added in with the other ingredients during cooking.)

Step-by-Step -

1 cup chopped onions

1/2 cup diced celery

In case you are wondering, I am adding into this container for a reason. I was prepping two different soups at once, and I didn't want to get my seasonings mixed up. This brings up a good tip about prepping ahead of time. Friends of mine have conveyed that they dislike the "chopping" part of prepping for a meal. If you do more than one meal prep at a time and just throw the ingredients in the fridge or freezer, you have just knocked out a significant amount of time on that second meal. You already have everything out.... so just chop and store. :)

1 Tbsp minced garlic

1 stick (8 Tbsp) butter

Saute onions, celery, garlic in butter

Allow them to become soft and translucent before adding additional ingredients

While sauteing the vegetables, chop your tasso (or ham). It comes from a specialty meats store, you you will most likely have it in a shrink wrapped packaging. They typically come packaged two pieces to a pack.

You can see that they are enveloped in a thick layer of seasoning and spices. They can be quite spicy depending on who prepared them, but not always. But they WILL be very smoky.

I cut them into about 1/2" pieces.

When the vegetables are soft, go ahead and add the tasso.

Now, just dump everything in (except the cream).

2 (15 oz) cans cream style corn

1/2 can white and yellow corn niblets, drained

2 cups diced potatoes

3 cups chicken broth/stock

1/2 cup tomato sauce

1 tsp kosher salt

1 rounded tsp granulated sugar

1/4 tsp black pepper

Here it is initially after adding everything. It is quite thin now. Bring this to a full boil for a couple of minutes, then turn down to simmer. Simmer uncovered for an hour. The starches in the corn will do a lovely job of making this "creamy" and thick. (You could just throw this in a crock pot/slow cooker.)

Here you can see the soup has reduced somewhat and thickened up. At this point (after the hour), you can add some cream to the soup for an even creamier (LOL) texture and taste. But it really is quite nice without it. If you do add the cream, warm it a bit first and just warm it gently. You don't want to boil it or the cream will "break" on you and curdle.

Garnish simply - some parsley, a chopped tomato, a bit of black pepper. Lovely when accompanied by some corn bread muffins.

Written Directions
Saute the onion, garlic, and celery
in the butter until soft and the tiniest bit brown. Add in all the
remaining ingredients. Yep, just dump them in and give it a good stir.
Bring to a boil over medium heat, then simmer for about an hour without
the lid. The potatoes should be soft by now.

*Optional -you
can add some heavy cream (~ 2/3 cup) to the final product, but it is
lovely even without it. If you elect to add the cream, warm the cream
first in a little pan and add it to the soup. Don't boil the soup with
the cream, or it will curdle. So keep it on a medium or so. The soup is
cooked, you are just warming the cream now. The cream is not
necessary, but it does give it a lovely mouth feel and ....er....
creaminess that I enjoy. The soup in the photos do NOT have the cream
in them, as I am planning on freezing this soup for an occasion we have
coming up. I will add cream after I thaw and gently warm the soup.

Food Nerd Notes -

Tasso Ham is a specialty
of Cajun cuisine. In this case, "ham" is a misnomer, since tasso is not made from the leg of
a pig, but the shoulder butt. This cut is typically fatty though
leaner cuts are often used and has a great deal of flavor. The butt, which will
weigh 7 to 8 pounds, is sliced across the grain into pieces about 3 in thick.
These are then dredged in a salt cure, which usually includes nitrates and sugar. The meat is left to cure very briefly, only three or four hours,
then rinsed, rubbed with a spice mixture which is sure to contain cayenne and garlic, and hot-smoked until cooked through. Tasso is not typically eaten on its own, but may be found
in dishes ranging from pasta to crab cakes, soup to gravy. Appropriate to its
roots, tasso is most often found in recipes of Southern or Cajun/Creole origin.

About Me

I am a prototypical modern American mom. I am retired professor of Anatomy & Physiology at a private Christian University, and mother to four beautiful children (3 boys and 1 girl). I am also a food blogger, cookbook author, and have owned my own cafe. My background is a PhD in Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience with emphasis on antioxidant research. My postdoctoral training was in human obesity and caloric restriction.

I grew up in South Louisiana where the best food in the world is routinely brought from the garden and the water, and put on the table. Everyone in my family of origin is a wonderful cook, so I guess it is just natural that I show my love to my family through food.

I love cooking and eating... and teaching my children the art and techniques of being in the kitchen. My mother taught me that there is always SOME part of the cooking process that even small children can help with...so my kids are indeed very familiar with the kitchen, the kitchen tools, use of homegrown herbs, etc.